Business

Facebook Testing Exchange Ads in the News Feed

Facebook is launching a "small alpha test" in which it will serve up Facebook Exchange ads in users' News Feeds, the company announced on Tuesday.

Introduced last fall, Facebook Exchange [FBX] ads are based on users' browsing histories from around the web. For instance, if you do a lot of searches related to bicycles, Facebook might present an ad from a bicycle shop. Though Facebook has allowed advertisers to run Promoted Posts, Sponsored Stories and Page Post Link Ads, this is the first time that more standard direct-response ads will run there as well. Up until now, such ads ran on the right-hand column of the Facebook page, a.k.a., the Marketplace section.

Facebook is only working with a handful of advertisers who work through three partners — TellApart, MediaMath, and Nanigans. "Over the coming weeks, we’ll expand to make these ads available to additional DSPs and advertisers," the company wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

The social network's motto is "Move fast and break things," and it is constantly experimenting with new products and ideas, so the migration of more such ads into the News Feed is far from a sure thing. However, if FBX ads become more common, Facebook will run the risk of irritating users with too many ad messages and cheapening the experience with direct-response ads. While users are in theory at least open to more relevant ads, at least one study has shown many consumers find them to be a turn off.

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